


faith in all things not yet spoken

by impossibletruths



Series: vigilance; victory; sacrifice [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Blight Cure, Epistolary Romance, F/M, First Kiss, King Alistair, Post-Blight, Post-Canon, Resolved Sexual Tension, Reunions, Warden/LI Reunion, acceptance of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 17:11:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17390354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: It has taken thousands of miles, and paper and ink, and staring down death and mortality and the indiscernible future, but she is here now, and she is ready, and she is done with being afraid. She is done with this lonely path she set them down. She is going to make things right.Or, the Warden comes home.[follow up tothe way things change]





	faith in all things not yet spoken

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the prompt "relief kiss" from tumblr. Title from "Dedication" by Rainer Maria Rilke. Direct (ish) sequel to The way things change.

Her heartbeat picks up the minute she sees the familiar shadow of the city on the horizon, its gables and spires and wall and the old fort atop its rise, staring down over the rest. They have never quite managed to repair the damage from the blight; Drakon’s tower points upwards, a jagged finger warning away any and all who would try to stand against Ferelden and its capital. Dog lord pride, even more than a decade past the Blight’s ending, even after the world has ended and been made whole again. Trust Fereldens to remain stubborn through it all.

Still, a city on the horizon is not a city spread out before her, and so she nudges her horse into a tired trot and sets them both down the old imperial highway. She has ridden this path many a time before, and save for the priceless discovery in her bag there is little different about it. Even the double time patter of her heartbeat is not altogether out of place.

She enters the city gate with the rest of the crowd. Market day, it seems; carts piled high with fine crafts from as far as Orzammar flow into the city, and the guard waves her through without a second glance. Not that she stands out, another muddied traveler in stained and fading armor with their hood drawn up. The dirt of the road and wear of the long journey beneath her heels hide the warden blue, and she does not mind the obscurity.

Eventually she loses the market crowd, hard-packed dirt roads giving way to cobblestone as she passes into the richer districts. She recognizes the standards flown from the noble houses, banns and arls signaling that they are in town, or out. Out, mostly; the last Landsmeet of the year has concluded, and the first of the season’s snows will set in soon, and most will have returned to their own keeps and castles to weather the Ferelden winter. She draws few eyes as she goes, and less interest; runners are a dime a dozen in this city––even hooded, muddied, and road-weary ones.

It is not until she reaches the gates of the old palace that anyone bothers to stop her. The guard is boyishly young, and the sight of him brings a wash of fond nostalgia. She huffs quietly to herself. She’s growing soft in her old age.

“Halt,” he calls, pike held warily in hand. “What’s your business?”

“Warden business,” she replies, pulling her hood back. Her hair has grown long in her time away; it spills forth to pool around her shoulders.

“Warden Commander!” He gapes up at her. “I–– I’m sorry, I––”

“I am here to see the king,” she tells him, saving him the trouble of stuttering through a response. “Is he in?”

“Yes, ser,” the boy responds. “But he’s––”

She doesn’t wait for the reply; she heaves herself off her horse and passes the reins to the boy, whose face grows redder by the second.

“See her stabled,” she orders, not entirely caring if he follows her directive, and she pushes past him into the courtyard. It is the same as it has always been, a little austere and a little dirty but solid and strong and still-standing, proud proof of Ferelden perseverance.

She strides through it with only half an eye to its unchanging state and less than that to the quietly protesting guard behind her. His stuttering draws the notice of others, but they either hesitate when they see the gryffon crest emblazoned on her chest or are not deft enough to lay hands on her. She ignores them too, save for those few she needs avoid. The boy, it seems, has found something to do with her mount; he trails along in her wake protesting that the king is not available at the moment, that she ought come back later, that she needs an appointment.

She ignores it all.

The letters tucked into her belt burn against her hip as she strides through the castle, every inch of it familiar as her own reflection––and alien too, immaterial and distant. She passes through it all as if in a dream, giving thought only to the words printed on parchment at her belt and the solution tucked into her bag and the man standing behind the closed double doors of the throne room.

She knocks them open with both hands, refusing to slow even for her own fear, in spite of her own fear. She has always driven herself forward no matter the cost, no matter the ruin wreaked around her.

She will do no less now.

He sits in his throne, one elbow braced on the arm rest, chin atop his hand, staring at a sheaf of parchment. His crown is askew on his head, and the faint sound of his voice muttering to himself hangs in the hall a moment before the noise and commotion of her entrance draws him away from his reading.

“What in Andraste’s name is going on?” he demands, head snapping up. “I was very clear I was––”

She stops in the center of the hall, that enormous hall where she once fought to the death with a terrible and desperate and proud general, where she once saved a nation, where she once placed that selfsame crown on Alistair’s unwilling head. She had known the choice she was making and had done it anyway, had set them each down long and lonely paths. It was a cruel thing to do, and the right thing, and its rightness made it no less cruel nor its cruelty any less right.

Now he sits here, on his throne, in his hall, with his crown, and the pieces fit him perfectly. He is kingly in the way she always knew he could be, always hoped he would be. She only regrets it a little.

“Maker,” he says, the softest hush, and the room falls silent and still with him. He stands. “Lira.”

“Your Majesty,” says the poor, flushed gate guard. “Your Majesty, I told her you weren’t––”

“It’s alright,” Alistair says, holding out a hand. He takes a few stuttering steps forward, and then seems to catch himself and stills. He has eyes only for her. “It’s fine, it’s––”

She is the one who pulls herself together first. She has always been the one to pull herself together first. “I need the room,” she tells the guardsmen, and the courtiers, and even the upper-level staff who have begun to poke their heads in to see the cause of such commotion. When none of them move, she presses her lips together and says, very still and very quiet and very cold, “Now.”

They give her the room. The guard is the last to leave, throwing careful glances over his shoulder before the door swings shut behind him.

And she and Alistair are alone.

She wants to say she does not know who moves first. She wants to say it was him, that she only met him halfway for the sake of decency. 

She would be lying.

He is frozen before his throne as she moves towards him, careful and sure and out in the open, no subterfuge or stealth or any of the other tricks she keeps up her sleeve. He stands there still and open and waiting as she reaches him, as she stands just before him and tilts her head up to see him.

He stands there when she pushes herself up on her toes and places her hands against his chest to steady herself and kisses him.

It is a kiss she has been waiting for for ten years, for longer. It is quiet, and soft, and nearly chaste. It does not leave her feeling changed, or lanced, or transformed. It does not leave her feeling much of anything, except the lingering sensation of his lips against hers and the warmth of his chest beneath her palms.

“I am sorry,” she says quietly, weight and heat and enormity of his letters at her belt, each carefully kept despite the length of her journey, despite the dangers, despite the trials and trouble and  _ time _ . All those important words left unsaid until paper and ink and thousands of miles lay between them, but she has them now, has them in her heart and on her tongue and in those countless, wild letters, and she is done with locking them away. “I am sorry that I did not tell you before.”

He stares down at her a moment longer, and then his hands come up to cup her face and he is kissing her for all his worth, holding her like he is a drowning man and she his lifeline, and she is open to him, open and parting and welcoming. She is drowning too, drowning in him, and has no want for a lifeline to pull herself safe.

It has taken thousands of miles, and paper and ink, and staring down death and mortality and the indiscernible future, but she is here now, and she is ready, and she is done with being afraid. She is done with this lonely path she set them down. She is ready to make things right.

She is panting when he pulls back, his forehead pressed against hers.

“It’s alright,” he says, and there is a hint of humor beneath it, of that old charm. “I forgive you.” He smiles then and it is not just a hint of that old charm, it is all of it funneled into a broad, boyish grin, one she missed more than she knew how to say, more than she knew how to feel. “You’ve really got a way with words.”

That tugs a laugh from her, and she does not worry to hide it. She lingers there in his space a moment longer before she shifts, and he lets her go, face almost still enough to be unreadable were it not her, were it not them. She catches the twinge of reticence.

But she does not go far, only uses the space to examine him, every new laugh line and wrinkle and scar. There are more than she quite cares for, especially the scars. She is glad, though, to see his crows feet settling in. Glad he still laughs.

“I hadn’t mean to be gone so long,” she tells him.

He wets his lips, suddenly uncertain. “Was it–– Was it worth it?”

“Yes,” she says, and watches as he hears, as he process, as he understands. He stares down at her, eyes wide, mouth wide. If he were glowing any brighter he would burst into flame.

“You found it?”

She cannot keep the smile off her own face as she nods. Her heartbeat picks up again, as though the troublesome organ might leap out of her chest, and she miles broader than she has in many months, in years. “I found it.”

He laughs, wild and loud and free, and lifts her up suddenly, spins her round and round in the wide, high, empty throne room. His laughter rings out all around them, fills the room and a hollow space within her she had not quite realized was empty and aching for it. She clings tight to his shoulders as he holds her, crown slipping further askew, boots scuffing against the rug underfoot, head thrown back and utterly, unspeakably joyful.

She would give almost anything to see him like this forever.

He comes to a stop eventually, but he does not set her down right away, and she cannot bring herself to mind. She feels each of his breaths against her, each heartbeat. He stares up at her, her arms half thrown around his shoulders, fit neatly against him like the final piece of a puzzle years in the making and even longer in the solving. The letters at her belt crinkle under his arm.

“Stay,” he asks of her. “Stay with me.”

And she says, “Alright.”

He kisses her again, third time lucky, and then sets her down. She tugs her armor straight and swallows back a smile at the mess her muddied uniform has made of his nice clothes. He does not seem to notice, or to care.

“Actually,” he says. “Before any of that, there’s something you need to see.”

“What is that?” she asks, tying back her too-long hair.

“Close your eyes,” he tells her, and she would not except that it is him. So she raises her eyebrows only a moment and then shuts them dutifully. She hears him move towards the door, and the susurrus murmur of a conversation, and then there is a long moment of waiting.

“No peeking,” he calls.

“I have not,” she replies, even though she was thinking it.

Finally, though, there is noise again, and movement, and then Alistair says, “Open them.”

He stands before her, looking inordinately pleased. She raises her eyebrows, means to ask what the grand reveal is, when there is a quiet huff at her feet, and it is a sound she would know anywhere.

It is the force of the relief that knocks her down, maybe, or her joy, or quite simply that her legs have carried her from this very castle to the far ends of the world and back again and will carry her no longer. Whatever the reason, she goes to her knees right there, unforgiving stone hard beneath the rug, and she does not notice the way her knees protest or care about the bruises she will have tomorrow because here, here before her, snuffling and snorting and wriggling forward to press himself into her lap, is her mabari.

“Oh,” she says, she cries; she lets him knock her over and lick every inch of her face, lets him burrow into her and crawl on top of her and wine and yelp. “Oh, Alfie, oh.” She cannot see him through her tears but her hand are on him anyway, against the curve of his skull and in the thinning, greying ruff of his collar and along the still-powerful muscles of his back. “Oh you good good boy.”

“He’s been waiting for you,” Alistair say somewhere above her. “We both have. Kept each other pretty decent company, if I do say so myself.”

Alfie barks at that and sits still long enough that she can wrap her arms around him and bury his face against his fur, hiding her tears if only for a moment.

“I’m sure,” she says thickly, trying to get herself back under control. It is something of a losing battle, but Alistair does not make mention of it. “He’s a very good boy.”

She continues to run her hands over Alfie’s fur as she takes a few shaky breaths, and when she can trust herself not to weep openly she wipes her eyes and stares up at Alistair. His face has gone open and gentle, and he smiles when he sees her looking at him.

“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you for everything, for listening, for helping, for––”

“You don’t have to thank me,” he interrupts her. “I couldn’t have done much of it without you.”

“You are a good man,” she tells him fiercely. “Far better than I have ever deserved.”

“Too bad,” he says, and when he kneels down and reaches for her she does not hesitate to tangle her fingers with his. “As long as I get a say in things, you’re stuck with me.”

There are practicalities to that of course, questions and caveats, but she does not care for such things. Not here, not now, not with only a few inches between them instead of miles. Not with words out in the open instead of trapped beneath her pen. Not with her old, faithful mabari snuffling into her hand, and not with Alistair’s fingers wrapped around the other, a refusal to let her disappear quite yet.

She is stuck, and she does not mind it at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I was a little uncertain about mabari lifespans but then I learned that they live ‘as long as the plot requires.’ Well, the plot requires Lira get a happy ending so Alfie's still alive and kicking.
> 
> find me on tumblr at [cityandking](http://cityandking.tumblr.com)


End file.
